Using billions of anonymous measurements from cell phones and vehicle sensors, Here Technologies, a location platform company, calculates how traffic conditions change throughout the day, said Alex Gordy, director of the company’s product management for traffic. That information can be used to predict how far you can get if you depart at rush hour versus later at night.
In Boston, you can drive a full 20 miles farther if you leave at 10 p.m. than if you leave at rush hour. Twenty miles might not seem like much, but in tightly packed New England, it’s the difference between being stuck in Massachusetts or escaping to neighboring Rhode Island or New Hampshire.
Compare that to Houston — a city with more than three times as many people as Boston — where you can travel almost 50 miles in one hour no matter what time you depart.